Contributed by Sharon Butler / Last month, seeing Richard Baker’s paintings from the 80s and 90s at Tibor de Nagy took me back to my early days in New York. I had arrived in Soho in 1987 after finishing a two-year stint studying painting at MassArt in Boston, where I made modest surface-oriented abstractions. In New York, … read more… “Looking back: Richard Baker at Tibor de Nagy”
Assistants: Connected through circumstance
Contributed by Adam Simon / Lineage is not a concept with a lot of currency these days; too close, perhaps, to its more déclassé kissing cousin, tradition. We look to academia and art history to find precursors for artistic innovators. Typically, the presentation and criticism of art tend to focus on the artist as a … read more… “Assistants: Connected through circumstance”
Amna Asghar: Plumbing orientalism
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Amna Asghar’s gently captivating new paintings, on display at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery on the Lower East Side, explore a rich variety of experiences and perceptions associated with the geographical movement or cultural displacement. Such a shift could be a matter of orderly emigration, traumatic upheaval, or impulsive wanderlust. Whatever its nature, … read more… “Amna Asghar: Plumbing orientalism”
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: October 2019
Contributed by Sharon Butler / This month, in addition to the ongoing impeachment inquiry, which seems to expand minute by minute, there are plenty of great exhibitions to see; I also have a few invitations to share. Please join us: Saturday, October 12, 4pm, I hope upstate readers can stop by the Woodstock Artists Association and … read more… “Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: October 2019”
Ideas and influences: Mike Cloud
Rather than parse the differences among us, Mike Cloud’s new paintings address the one experience we all have in common regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, wealth, or nationality: impending death. For his solo show at Thomas Erben, on view through November 2, Cloud has used stretcher bars, belts, fabrics, paint, and other materials to create … read more… “Ideas and influences: Mike Cloud”
Melissa Capasso: Good vibrations
Contributed by Jennifer Rose Bonilla-Edgington / It’s the visual vibrations, both from individual paintings and from the show as a whole, that first call the viewer to Brooklyn-based artist Melissa Capasso’s work, on view at Jennifer Wroblewski’s gallery Gold/Scopophilia in Montclair. Vibrant and predominantly abstract, Capasso’s small-scale paintings suggest beats of life flowing from one piece to the next.
Thomas Berding: Something wild
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Thomas Berding’s insouciant show “Field Test,” at The Painting Center in Chelsea, is a smart, spirited consideration of the tension between the whirl and the pastoral. The seven paintings – and their witty titles – are straightforward enough to impart primary messages clearly, but that leaves more time to decrypt the … read more… “Thomas Berding: Something wild”
Gary Petersen: The span of attention
Contributed by Riad Miah / “Just Hold On,” the title of Gary Petersen’s second show at McKenzie Fine Arts on the Lower East Side, fits the arresting energy of his work, his playful palette, and the rich provenance of his geometric abstractions. Perhaps he is referring to the moment a person in mid-conversation decides to pause … read more… “Gary Petersen: The span of attention”
Art and Film: Issa López’s fierce children
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Mike Kelley, the late conceptual artist, famously cast stuffed animals both as children’s escape hatches from worldly nastiness and as the potential tools of their nefarious seducers or demons. Writer-director Issa López maintains this duality in Tigers Are Not Afraid, a film of stunning inventiveness, brutality, and compassion. Presented as the … read more… “Art and Film: Issa López’s fierce children”
Catherine Howe: Sly virtuosity
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Calling Catherine Howe’s whirling, monochromic flower paintings “the pleasure garden” is archly ironic, like calling de Kooning’s early paintings “women.” Although her canvases outwardly do describe floral forms, their deeper meaning lies in the large, threatening scale, the aggressively fluid use of materials, and the evident physical energy that went into their making. … read more… “Catherine Howe: Sly virtuosity”